"The Vampyre" by John William Polidori, published in April 1819, was the first English prose vampire story and set off a craze of vampire fiction. It began as a fragment of a novel by Lord Byron and was adapted into a short story by Polidori, who had been Byron's personal physician. It was published with an attribution to Lord Byron -- probably on purpose, for the sake of selling more copies, as the misattribution stuck long after both Polidori and Byron corrected it. Has been adapted numerous times into plays, operas, and even a TV miniseries.